Field
This disclosure relates generally to integrated circuits and more specifically to a method for authenticating an integrated circuit device.
Related Art
In contract manufacturing for integrated circuits, the design and development is done by an original device manufacturer (ODM), but the actual integrated circuit device production may be outsourced to a third-party contract manufacturer. This creates the risk for the ODM that illicit clones of the original devices are created through overproduction runs by the contract manufacturer, where the production chain of the original devices is misused for the creation of extra units. These extra units are not manufactured under the control of the ODM and the manufacturing cost will also not be paid by them. These extra units are in effect identical to the legitimate units (except perhaps for quality control), but may be considered as illicit clones, as they will not be sold through the ODM's channels.
The sale of the illicit devices not only affects the ODM's business, but may also affect the functionality of the legitimate devices. In a situation where the manufactured devices are functionally dependent on an on-line service provider, as is typically the case for internet of things (IoT) devices, such cloned devices, when sold to end users, may adversely affect the availability of the on-line service, and through that the overall functioning of all sold devices, including the legitimate devices.
If more devices than expected access and make use of the on-line service, more network traffic can result (simultaneously and overall), potentially exceeding the available bandwidth, and cause more transactions (perhaps with accompanying calculations, bookkeeping, data storage, etc.). As a result, this could undermine the stability and availability of the on-line service, forcing the service provider to invest in more capacity (both bandwidth and computation power). This may in turn adversely affect the business viability of the online service itself.
Therefore, a need exists for a method to detect the illicit devices and thus prevent the unauthorized use of bandwidth and computation power.